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As we get closer and closer to the release of the long awaited reboot of the film adaptation to Stephen King’s classic novel, IT, we here at Geek Motivation decided to take another look at the original mini-series from 1990.
In the small town of Derry, Maine, a creature lurks from the sewers and feeds on the local children. This creature comes in many forms. It’s most notable form is Pennywise the dancing clown. Amongst these tortured youth is a group of kids known as the “Losers Club” who all share similar experiences with this creepy clown. Together, the club decides to investigate this creature and end its reign of terror.
The main cast had some pretty decent acting. The children and their adult counterparts do a good job at illustrating the horror of their experiences. The main attraction of the acting in this movie is from Tim Curry playing Pennywise. His performance is equally campy and scary. Even in his moments of humor, Curry still left me with chills down my spine because I could never guess what he would do next.
The cinematography and score work cohesively together. Pennywise’s theme music creates a dark and looming tone that make his jump scares even more intense. The film does a great job at showing the different forms of this creature. The practical effects don’t always come off as state of the art, but they still get the job done.
Now let’s talk about what limits this movie. First of all, since IT was released as a two-part series on TV, the full movie is a little over 3 hours. Even though there’s a lot of story to tell, the movie is pretty exhausting to watch in one sitting. Another problem with IT is the pacing. A huge chunk of this story is focused on the development of the Losers Club as they bond as kids and adults. While one of the essential points to this whole story is the change from childhood to adulthood, it messes with the horror aesthetic of the overall movie. To be fair, the character development in this movie is actually pretty good. By the end, I really cared for these characters. But despite that, I got irritated a few times when the movie would solely focus on the drama between these characters and I would forget about Pennywise all together. The biggest problem with IT is the ending. The final confrontation with the protagonists and the creature felt really goofy and pushed. The writing of the film’s epilogue came off as just lazy.
Overall, IT has its shares of ups and downs. There’s plenty of scary moments from Pennywise the Clown, but the film starts to derail itself when it loses focus on the creepy antagonist. If you can overlook the length and the poorly written ending, IT is a decent movie that you should watch at least once.
6.5/10
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